Jennifer Shaw

A writer's musings in the mountains

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  • Sketch Reveal and A New Blurb

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    Last year, I discovered how awesome it felt to have an artist illustrate a picture for my work.

    Artist and writer Sybil Wainwright created the above for my feminist ghost story “Hello, Dear,” published by Amaranth in September of last year. I love how she chose sepia tones to mimic the look of an old photograph.

    Artist Khareese Orr created this one for “So Many Fragile Things,” a Christmas horror story with dark fantasy elements, published by Amaranth in December. The crack in the glass suggesting a hand seizing the house is perfect. I also appreciate the little images inside the holly berries.

    This year, no one is commissioning work for any of my pieces. It’s looking like I’ll end 2025 with only one story published, though I believe I’ve improved in my craft. That’s how it goes sometimes, I suppose.

    I decided, however, on whims of rebellion and self-love, that I would commission something for myself. Why not?

    I was also curious about how that process worked. How does the writer communicate their vision to the artist? What are the details of a contract? What does the creative process look like? Commissioning book art, especially cover work, is a key piece of self-publishing, which is something I’d like to learn more about.

    So, after being taken by the beauty of Marta Into the Forest’s gorgeous, gothic-y medieval creations, I reached out to her via Substack.

    Here’s a small sample of the work she’s shared there:

    Samples of internal book art

    Titled “The Blood Rings,” ominously beautiful. There’s a definite narrative here, probably a commission from a writer.

    Holy hell, look at this gorgeous end paper… hauntingly impressionistic. Done for author K.M. Davidson’s book “Sundered Heavens”

    Marta was warm and quick in her response. She had openings starting in October, so on the first of the spooky month, I sent her a short description of my vision for an internal art design inspired by “Elspeth and the Fairy.” I relayed how the character was a fairy with pointy ears and long dark hair, but her ears didn’t have to show. I visualized her holding a daffodil (significant to the story) and wearing a gown of woven leaves, as she’s described in the tale. I explained she is beautiful but haughty and antagonistic. I also said I would defer to Marta as the artist–whatever she thought would look best, I was game to see.

    I paid the fee–a very reasonable one–upfront and signed the contract with Marta. I agreed to limited rights, allowing Marta to retain the image for her own portfolio and marketing purposes, basically, and she got started. She sent me samples of her work-in-progress for feedback along the way (as outlined in the contract), and they were like little pop-up treats for my in-box.

    If you’re not familiar with the term, an internal art design is a small sketch or symbol found inside the pages of a novel or story collection/anthology, often at the top of a chapter or above a section break within a chapter or story. It adds a little flair to the book’s format, an additional little aesthetic appeal.

    Marta worked fast, finishing my commission in about two weeks. So, without further ado, here it is…

    Cue drumroll…

    Image by @marta.intotheforest

    Isn’t she gorgeous?! She is Lady Rowan, a fairy guardian of early spring and antagonist to Elspeth in my fairy tale, published in Spellbound in September of this year.

    I left a fair amount up to Marta, and I love how she chose not to show Rowan’s face. This is common in book and especially cover art, as I understand it, the idea being that readers get to envision the exact look or beauty of the character in their own minds. It’s arguably more universally appealing, and I can understand that notion.

    Happily, this image works well not only for “Elspeth and the Fairy” but even better for the fictional piece I just completed, a novelette and sequel to “Elspeth” in which Rowan makes a brief appearance at the very end.

    Again, if you’re not familiar with the term, a novelette is a fictional work longer than a typical short story but shorter than a novella. It ranges in word count from 7,500 to 17,500 words.

    I wrote my 12.5 k sequel, quite simply, because I just wasn’t ready to be done with the story’s world. In fact, I started it the day after Spellbound was released.

    I was intrigued by the idea of writing another version of the same ending, from a different character’s perspective. How could I flesh him out? What were things like through his eyes? How precisely did he feel? What exactly did he grapple with, and how did he change? How could I develop the love story itself, unfettered by word count and completely free for me to write exactly what I wanted to?

    I call this piece (more a historical fantasy romance than a fairy tale) a sequel because it does extend the story a little way beyond the first tale’s end, but really it might just be a companion piece.

    And you know what? Writing it was deeply satisfying.

    In fact, it turned into my unexpected passion project for the year.

    I did not write it with an eye toward publication (though now I’m considering what I could do with it on my own terms), and that proved meaningful because it reminded me why I devote most of my free time to this fiction thing in the first place.

    I do it because I love challenging my imagination through the medium of language. I love the act of writing itself, regardless of the outcome.

    It is, first and foremost, my ultimate act of self-care.

    I’m no longer a working professional strategizing and problem-solving on a daily basis. So, writing keeps my mind sharp and my creativity nourished. It allows me a healthy escape and even a way to manage difficult emotions. It gives me a purpose beyond my domestic life and even something toward which to aspire (as long as I remain firmly rooted in its primary purpose). When I’m in that delicious flow state, it gives me a way to transcend myself, even when I’m writing utter dog crap.

    It’s magic, in short. And not just magic in the metaphorical sense but in the literal, if we define magic as “the practice of moving natural energies to effect needed change… a tool to improve ourselves and the world in which we live” (Scott Cunningham, from Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner).

    My new novelette does have a working title, but I don’t want to include it here in case anyone reading this post hasn’t read “Elspeth and the Fairy;” I don’t want to give too much away.

    I will share a blurb for it, however:

    A curse breaks.

    A second chance reigns.

    A first chance aspires to love.

    For ten years following a witch’s spell, the mysterious Muir has labored as a wretched half-man, half-goat in the scullery of a minor lord, his true identity unknown. Only a maiden of the household, the brave and sympathetic Lady Elspeth, has shown him protection and care. In return, he has done his best to guide her on her quest to save the man she adores, the afflicted Lord Alistair, heir presumptive, from the fairies wreaking havoc in a kingdom without a monarch.

    Now, having proven victorious in her trial, Elspeth has not only saved Alistair but someone else… And Muir, restored to his former glory, is now free to pursue all that’s his, including his beloved Beth.

    But first, he must find her while wrestling deep, new shadows in the dark heart of the forest. Can he reach his maiden in time, even as he confronts his greatest failures? And if he finds her, will she even want him?

    Can he prove himself worthy of her?

    This blurb is definitely a draft and little cringey, but hey, it’s early. Thanks for letting me share it with you! If I can work up the courage, I might share the very first scene of Chapter One in a new post tomorrow.

    I hope you’ve enjoyed this one full of beautiful images. And I hope your November is going well. Thank goodness the government has reopened…

    To wrap up, here are the latest additions to my list of things I’m thankful for, each one inspired by the goings on of that particular day. This list covers Nov 8 through today, Nov 13:

    8. A sweet daughter who still loves spending her Saturday with Mom and Dad

    9. Morning cuddles in bed with coffee while the first snow falls outside our witch’s window

    10. Doing housework leisurely while T Swift sings through my earbuds (I’m currently obsessed with the acoustic version of her new song “The Fate of Ophelia”)

    11. Wonderful mother-in-laws who spoil our kiddo with things like hot air balloon windsocks just because Daphne took a fancy to these particular aerial vehicles. Happy birthday, Julie! Cary, we love you too!

    12. A long To-Be-Read (TBR) list and being able to swap book recs with my own amazing mama. I just got her to read Mexican Gothic.

    13. A husband who knows how to buy me THE. PERFECT. XMAS. GIFT: A Nov 26th performance of The Nutcracker by the Newport Contemporary Ballet, done in one of the Gilded Age Newport RI Mansions, Rosecliff (where parts of the Robert Redford Great Gatsby were shot). Apparently, the audience will walk room-to-room for the first act and then enjoy the second act in the grand ballroom. I *cannot wait* for the Sugar Plum’s grand pas de deux under those chandeliers!!!

    Rosecliff ballroom, image from Threads

    Thank you for reading. Do you have any news? Anything you’re particularly grateful for? Or any insight into commissioning artwork, if you’re an author?

    Feel free to pop anything in the comments.

    See you tomorrow, maybe. Next week, for sure.

    XOXO,

    Jenn

    Download a free e-version of Spellbound to read “Elspeth and the Fairy,” which has the privilege of opening this collection of fantasy/magic stories.

  • Book Review: THE CREATIONIST’S CURSE

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    A while back, my talented writing friend Colleen Brown gifted me a print copy of her expanded short story The Creationist’s Curse, published in May of this year and available in e- and print copies and on Kindle Unlimited.

    Isn’t that gorgeous?

    From the back cover:

    When Evelyn Awbrey, Curator of Arcane Books and the Occult, discovers a long-lost tarot deck linked to the infamous Creationist, Elvira, ancient magic stirs–and something begins to awaken. With the autumn equinox fading, dark forces hunt the relic, eager to tear apart the city of Margoza.

    Evelyn will do anything to keep it hidden. To protect her daughter. To bury the truth.

    But secrets refuse to stay buried. And the deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes: the curse isn’t just in the cards–it’s in her blood.

    The Creationist’s Curse is a darkly enchanting tale of forbidden magic, deadly secrets, and how far a mother will go to protect what she loves… even if it destroys her.

    She can hide the relic, but she can’t outrun the Creationist’s Curse.

    A fabulous fall read

    I loved this story the first time I read the original in the RHS anthology Meet Me at Midnight. In fact, it was my introduction to Brown’s work, the first time I realized she has the kind of prose you just want to sink into–fresh, lush, and especially sensory. It’s dark and gorgeously immersive without overwhelming you. No matter which story it is, you’re there, entirely in the scene she’s created, and the effect is as gratifyingly otherworldly as the subject of magic itself, which weaves its spells through all of Brown’s tales.

    Now, in this latest version of Creationist, I appreciate how Brown has further developed certain characters in this deeply atmospheric, dark academia fantasy.

    In it, readers understand more about the antagonist Nathaniel Brown/Huxley, the protagonist’s second husband and stepfather to her daughter. He is also an ancient, dark figure in disguise, as Evelyn has realized, secretly out to seize for himself the most powerful aspect of the Creationist Elvira’s tarot deck, which Evelyn works desperately to hide before it’s too late.

    As Evelyn scrambles to secure the most powerful part of the deck before Nathaniel/Huxley can wrest it from her, she worries about the effect he’s had on her daughter all these years, before any of them realized his malevolence. What has he suggested to her child? What kind of influence has he wielded, when no other adult has been around? What things might he do in the years to come? Can she always be there to protect Mina?

    This struck a raw chord for me; it’s a real-world anxiety many parents experience when they realize someone close to their child isn’t who they thought they were. I found this newly developed part, as such, especially effective–one of those moments in this genre that truly transcends all the fantasy, reminding us we are indeed reading a story about real human experience, the human condition.

    Brown also develops Alaric’s character, an older gentleman and platonic friend to the protagonist who’s been gone for a while but is now mysteriously back, called forth, it’s suggested, for some larger purpose. It is in Alaric’s dialogue with another of Evelyn’s friends, the strong and admirable Martha, a colleague of Evelyn’s, that readers sense Alaric’s positioning as a mentor-to-be to young Mina, Evelyn’s daughter, and Brown lights a candle of hope for the larger story to come.

    Finally, in this expanded version readers get to meet Evelyn’s child, little Mina, though only briefly. This precocious eight-year-old wakes at the story’s end, just before 1 am, to a strange sense of foreboding. In the surprise arrival of a crow and the abbreviated whispers between her stepfather and a man she’s never met (Alaric), Mina senses an ominous shift in her circumstances though she can barely understand any of it, and that tugged right on my heartstrings.

    In short, the entirety of this expanded, newly-published version of The Creationist’s Curse is a delightful teaser, planting deeper suggestions about who these characters are plus the seeds of what’s to come for the larger narrative. This slim, gorgeous book serves, essentially, as an appetizer for a duology of dark fantasy novels with Mina at their center, and I cannot wait for Brown to publish them.

    If you’re a fan of dark fantasy, dark academia, and/or lush, immersive prose, I recommend The Creationist’s Curse as well as any of Colleen Brown’s other short fiction, especially “The Crimson Trials” in Scales, Tales, and Tiaras; “What Goes Unkept” in All The Promises We Cannot Keep; and “A Potion for Forever” in Spellbound; all of which I adored. They’re all great autumnal stories to boot.

    Free to download

    Free to download

    Thank you, Colleen, for your generosity and the gift of your work to the world.

    Truly, I will not be surprised to find, one day, a novel of yours on the Bestseller shelf at Barnes and Noble, and I’ll be able to brag that I knew you when…

    ***

    Before wrapping up, I also want to share my first seven days of November gratitude, in the spirit of this season of thankfulness. Each of these was inspired by the goings-on of that particular day, Nov 1 through today, Nov 7.

    1. Healthy parents who can still travel to visit us
    2. An adoring husband other women flirt with
    3. Extra money to commission art that fuels my creativity (more about that next week!)
    4. Time to devote to a specific passion project (more about that to come)
    5. Writer friends who both inspire and support me, with everything from feedback/moral support to simply reading and commenting on my posts. If any of you see this–thank you Gloria, Colleen, Robyn, Kathlene, and Melinda!
    6. Fellow Substackers to discuss the books I love with
    7. Mythic Moose, which is more than a side hustle–it’s a sweet family endeavor

    Scanning this list reminds me, yet again, how wonderfully privileged I am, especially when it comes to the people in my life, near and far.

    Photo by Ksenia Philippova on Unsplash

    Happy November! As always, thank you for reading, and please share anything you’d like in the comments–a bit of thankfulness or anything else.

    XOXO,

    Jenn

  • Our Haunted Farmhouse?

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    Three weeks ago, I wrote about how we keep witches out of our house.

    The ghosts, I’m not so sure about. And honestly, I don’t really want them gone.

    In 2021, right after we moved into our little 1800 Vermont farmhouse, we began experiencing things that were difficult to explain.

    Our farmhouse

    In those earliest weeks, Jer and I woke up multiple times to the smell of scrambling eggs and frying bacon. Seriously, it was like someone silently making a full-on breakfast downstairs.

    “What the hell?” We’d look at each other, and after staggering down to start the coffee–can’t deal with spirits until you’ve had some caffeine–we’d see nothing beyond the dim kitchen and cold stove. The aroma, too, had subsided, or we’d quickly gone nose-blind.

    Could that smell have been steam inside the floorboard radiators?

    Except it was June. The heaters weren’t on, and, generally, steam doesn’t smell like bacon.

    We let it go. There was a lot to do to settle in, and as long as this little old house was functioning in one piece, we weren’t too concerned.

    These aromatic encounters didn’t last through our first year. Maybe the ghosts accepted the reality of new inhabitants. Who knows?

    More recently, though, we’ve experienced other things, like being touched.

    It happened to Jer first. He’d gone into the basement one day to get the dehumidifier to empty outside. When he came back up with it, he said something like, “That was weird.”

    “What?”

    “Something touched my head on the way down. I felt it very clearly.”

    Then, earlier this year, I was washing dishes at the sink when I felt a cupped hand caress the side of my skull. It happened just once, but it was distinct.

    I shrieked and nearly left my skin. Swiping frantically at my head, my first thought was a spider had somehow landed there. We have wolf spiders in our basement, and they occasionally make surprise appearances on the first floor. In my initial panic, I thought one had somehow landed on me Arachnophobia-style.

    Image from bloodydisgusting.com

    Hell to the NO.

    I made my husband run both his hands all through my hair and down the back of my shirt. I even lifted up my shirt and bra for him.

    “Nothing’s there, I promise.” Then he grinned. “But that’s nice.”

    Only when calm could I acknowledge what I’d felt was more like an intentional, tender hand than the legs of an errant arachnid. I’d say a human hand except no one was in the kitchen with me.

    The second time it happened, a few months later, I was much calmer. In fact, it was kind of nice.

    “Hi, Lucille,” I replied, naming the odd, deceased aunt of the man from whom we bought this long-standing family property. She lived here alone in the 1990s and apparently still plowed the fields using a horse, according to Shane, the seller.

    Another time, Jer was at the toaster and I was snacking at our breakfast bar, and he turned to me.

    “Was that you?”

    “What?”

    “Something just touched my shoulder.”

    “Oh… not me. Must have been the ghost.”

    That’s become a not-infrequent saying around here.

    We’ve never seen anything strange, but when my mother stayed with us a couple years ago, she was sleeping in Daphne’s twin bed, where she could see straight into our master bedroom. Daph was between me and Jer in our room and slept soundly through that night.

    In the morning, Mom asked how long Daphne was awake.

    “She wasn’t. Did you see something?”

    “I thought I saw her up and walking around the foot of your bed.”

    “She was between us the entire night, as far as I remember.”

    “Oh.” Mom looked rather disturbed. “I thought I saw someone walking around.”

    Image from Microsoft Design

    Hmm.

    What’s been most frequent–and sometimes unnerving, I’ll admit–are the sounds.

    A voice, once. Jer came out one morning after I’d dropped Daph at school, casually sipping his coffee. I’d just finished the chicken chores.

    “How long have you been out here?”

    “About fifteen minutes. Why? What happened?”

    “Oh,” he shrugged. “Someone was just humming and singing upstairs.”

    We hear bangs sometimes, too. Random whacks that might be the boiler or something related to it but don’t come from the basement. They sound much closer.

    Uncle JT, who’s only four years older than my husband and visits us often, has said to Jer, “Your house is haunted as hell.”

    He hears nocturnal thumping right outside his little guest room door, the door of our utility room where we’ve managed to fit a twin bed. The sound comes from the dining room, he says.

    It freaks him out, he admits, but “I just keep the door shut and try not to think about it.”

    For us, the sounds are usually footsteps. The sound of the old wooden floor creaking under shifting weight.

    We hear these footsteps everywhere, including Daph’s room and our bedroom, and especially at night, when we’re already in bed.

    At this point, we’re used to them. Often, when I’m just under the surface of sleep, I’ll register them, give myself a moment to decide if they’re actually outside myself or inside my head, and then I’ll turn over, letting them go, and the night is peaceful.

    The energy in this old house isn’t malevolent. It’s only ever felt warm and benevolent. Super cozy.

    Mostly.

    So, if there are spirits here, I believe they approve of us. We’ve tried hard, after all, to be loving and respectful caretakers of this wonderful old property.

    Maybe the ghosts even care about us. One time Daphne was on the edge of a meltdown, and she was cuddled up with my husband on the couch. Jer felt something like a warmth and phantom weight suddenly beside them, enveloping them. It was comforting, he said, like a phantom hug.

    Isn’t that nice?

    Only once have strange sounds truly frightened me. This was also my most vivid encounter with this weird energy to date.

    It was late, around 3 am one Sunday morning last September, when we were still brooding a batch of baby chicks indoors.

    I was wide awake, my rational brain hard at work. I was writing on my laptop downstairs in the well-lit living room, laboring to get a short story edited for a looming deadline. I was totally immersed in the piece, but then I heard that familiar sound. The footsteps.

    I paused, wondering if either Jer or Daphne was awake, maybe using the upstairs bathroom or up playing. If Daph gets up in the middle of the night–rare, thank goodness–she requires supervision.

    I listened, hearing the steps again. They were erratic, pausing and starting, wandering it seemed, like someone was shuffling around in the same general place. But the sounds were softer than my daughter’s steps; she drives all her weight into her feet, as sensory input I think, and she likes to stomp.

    I realized–the noise was coming from the black dining room.

    The outdoor floodlights weren’t on. I had not heard either bell hung on either outer door chime. I had not heard glass shattering.

    Not an intruder. (That would be an entirely different scary story.)

    I waited, fingers hovering over the laptop keys. Wondering how long these phantom sounds would last… what might happen next…

    I was wide awake for it.

    Then…

    I heard our four chicks go nuts inside their plastic bin in the utility room, just off the dining room. All the sudden, they were squawking and flapping like little crazed banshees.

    Mom, you would not believe what happened last night!

    It was exactly the sound they made each time one of us lifted the screen off their brooder to change their water or shavings.

    Dear. God. In. Heaven.

    The blood drained from my body. My underarms were soaked, despite my goosebumps.

    My lungs became lead, and I truly struggled for a minute to breathe.

    All those classic symptoms, and I absolutely felt them.

    It’s rare for me to remember specific past thoughts, but I remember these:

    It’s probably nothing. Or it’s something you can explain.

    If it isn’t, then it’s just energy. IT CAN’T HURT YOU…

    Image from Microsoft Design

    My prefrontal cortex literally had to fight my lizard amygdala in order to calm myself.

    After that, everything went silent. Susie, Jeanie, Mimi, and Daisy all settled.

    Once I could breathe, and move, I saved my document one more time, closed my laptop, left it perched on the broad arm of the couch, and slipped upstairs, leaving the lights on, electric bill be damned. I slid by that two-hundred-year-old dining room as fast as I could, eyes averted. I made it upstairs untouched, thank you great, good Lord above, and slid into bed against my husband.

    In retrospect, I was terrified not so much because I felt physically threatened, but because I was suddenly, and so acutely, experiencing something I simply could not explain. And it had gone on and on, it seemed, for several minutes.

    That’s it, isn’t it, really?

    That fear of the unknown. What we can’t rationalize, what we cannot in the moment understand.

    That’s at the heart of it all, I think.

    All the terror.

    But, that was one moment, and it was mostly me, I believe. Caught off guard.

    “Maybe Lucille just wanted to see the chicks for herself,” Jer said later. “To make sure we’re taking good care of them.”

    Maybe?

    I am a rational person. I believe in physics, science, and empiricism. I believe that the simplest, most logical explanation is often the right one.

    But I also know there is so, so much none of us can understand about the universe.

    Sometimes, Jer and I talk about how time, a human construct anyway, isn’t as simple and linear perhaps as we Westerners believe. Maybe it’s much more complicated and cyclical, like a chain, and these ghostly encounters are really just the past and present brushing up against each other, or momentarily overlapping, The Others-style. I like that thought (and the idea that I’m Nicole Kidman).

    Photo from flickfilosopher

    I don’t mind sharing space with benign spiritual energy, the warm-hearted residents of the past. They were here first, after all, and maybe they’re still here living their own lives, and I respect that.

    “Can you imagine them hearing Daphne scream and stomp in their time, in 19- or 1825?” Jer has said. “How terrifying would that be?”

    “‘That’s one pissed off ghost,’” I said.

    We laughed.

    But, I’ll be honest. I will never bring a Ouija board into this house. And I don’t go downstairs after midnight unless I have to.

    Image from Britannica

    Thanks for reading! If you feel inclined to share any strange or supernatural experiences of your own, please drop them in the comments! I eat this stuff up.

    Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope it’s spooky and fun.

    Image from Microsoft Design

    We all need some fun after everything that’s gone on this year (that’s the real horror, but I’m not getting into it here.)

    See you next week!

    XOXO,

    Jenn

  • Spooky AAC Awareness

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    October is a special month. We get to celebrate Halloween while helping one another become more aware of issues like breast and mental health.

    It is also Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Awareness Month.

    AAC is any manner or system which allows a non or limited-speaking person to communicate in ways other than their own vocalized words. It is a subject dear to me given that our daughter, Daphne, is a non-speaking autistic whose life has been so enriched by her alternative communication technology.

    This is the third autumn, for example, that she’s been able to tell us via her AAC software, TouchChat (on her speech-dedicated i-Pad or “talker,” as we call it), what she wants to be for Halloween. In 2023 it was an elephant.

    Last year, she said “squid” on her talker.

    This year, inspired by our trip to the Mystic Aquarium, she told us “sea lion.”

    Isn’t that simply wonderful?

    Proud of her costume

    I was also asked this month to volunteer with the Vermont Family Network. I can’t discuss specifics due to confidentiality, but basically this work entailed sharing how our family has supported Daphne’s communication development. Here are some photos and a short video I submitted; they’re good little glimpses into what her software is like.

    Main page with core (most frequently used) vocabulary

    People page, customizable
    Places page
    Actions page
    Descriptions page
    Categories page, where most fringe vocabulary (less frequent words) can be found

    Daph’s inability to speak was one of the most devastating challenges we faced early in her diagnosis, but I don’t feel that way anymore. Truly, TouchChat is a major component of her voice, and she loves her talker. She can now express her basic needs, like what she wants to eat, drink, and do, while also using it to say “yes,” “no,” “please,” “thank you,” “help,” and “I love you” among other phrases. TouchChat is allowing her to become quite the self-advocate.

    Social page
    Quick video demo

    Daphne also loves exploring her software and continues to learn new “fringe” vocabulary every day, especially in the context of songs, books, and games. The more playful for her, the better, as with any child. She can now answer academic questions and even sing and read with us using TouchChat.

    I am eternally grateful for this technology and for all the speech therapists, educators, other experts, and families/advocates who do so much to empower AAC users and teach the world about its possibilities, normalizing its use for everyone.

    Next week, when her grandparents, dad, and I take Daphne to the local Trunk or Treat at the Kingdom Campgrounds, she will be able to say “Trick or Treat” and “Thank you” while collecting her candy. She will, in the best ways, be just like everyone else.

    Trying on her sea lion costume

    In other seasonal news…

    I harvested nine beautiful orange pumpkins from our garden. Most of them I left outside on display, but you can see they’ve become oversized hen treats.

    Wow… hungry hens

    No matter–it’s a great use for the gourds. Apparently, pumpkin is nutritious for chickens, the flesh “chock full of vitamin E, thiamine, niacin, vitamin B6 and iron” while the seeds are “an excellent source of dietary fiber, zinc, protein and healthy fats.” So yay, I’ll let the girls peck them all day, as long as they’re still eating their regular feed.

    Speaking of pumpkins, we took Daph to a pumpkin decorating event at our favorite pizza place, Papa Tirozzi’s Bakery. She did a fabulous job tying a mermaid tail to her chosen gourd and pressing stickers and rhinestones on its surface, a great fine motor activity.

    Concentrating on her craft

    Daphne also happened to steal the organizer’s heart, and her picture made it onto Tirozzi’s Facebook page.

    Social media darling

    This weekend, we’re heading south for a family jaunt to the 2025 Carnage gaming convention in Killington. We’re visiting as guests this year, but we plan to scope it all out and, maybe, attend as Mythic Moose vendors next year. That could be a fabulous way to grow our online trading card game business.

    I’ve got my mini boxed wine and camping glass ready to go for the hotel room.

    Goodies to go

    I’d love to know your special seasonal plans! Or, if you have any questions about AAC, don’t hesitate to pop them in the comments.

    See you next week!

    XOXO,

    Jenn

  • The Witch Window: A Bit of Vermont Folklore

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    How do you keep a witch out of your house?

    I’ll let you ponder that while I provide a little backstory.

    When my family moved from Houston to northern Vermont in 2021, we didn’t just relocate. My husband and I dug our hands deep into the soil of our lives and ripped up everything we could.

    And while it was painful to leave our parents and siblings behind, it was also the most cathartic experience of my life.

    Among the many things we re-envisioned was the type of house we wanted to live in. In suburban Houston, we’d had one of those master-planned community tract homes. Ours was an Ashton Woods, and that didn’t mean anything special. All the houses in our neighborhood–the David Weeklies, Newmarks, Pultes, etc.–looked basically the same. The bricks and rooflines were nearly identical, the floor plans all open-concept. Windows varied only in size. Uniqueness meant that perhaps a particular floorplan included a skylight, or the buyer could select something “different” from a pre-set list of minor structural upgrades. Interior detailing was minimal and based on no clear tradition or design concept except, perhaps, utilitarianism. Fixtures, countertops, backsplashes, etc. were chosen from catalogs, so they also conveyed the same generic aesthetic.

    When we brought our relatives to see our lot during construction, my sister-in-law looked around and remarked, “It’s kind of Stepford-y, isn’t it?”

    She wasn’t wrong.

    So, when we made the radical decision to start over in New England, we resolved to find a more special home with a character truer to our tastes, even if it meant we chose something old, impractical,… and perhaps a little witchy.

    That is exactly what we got. We purchased a small 200-year-old Cape Cod style farmhouse in the Northeast Kingdom, and, a vast majority of the time, I love it.

    Our farmhouse photographed this morning, Oct 10th

    One of the features I adore most is our witch window.

    Closer view of our witch window

    This is a second story window common in many old farmhouses of the region. The window sits at a 45 degree angle under a gable, usually just above a newer section of the house. It will strike you as odd, even quirky, but when you look at the available wall space, especially from the outside, it makes sense–the angle allows for a window where there would be no room for one otherwise, thanks to the added wing taking up a majority of space (Keri Murray Architecture).

    In fact, the purpose of these windows, found commonly in central and northern Vermont, is entirely practical. They provide fresh air and daylight to an upstairs room, sometimes where an original window had to be taken out when a new wing was later added to the home. Often, the old window got reused, angled to fit under the roofline, saving money. It was a frugal maneuver, and 18th-19th century Vermont farmers had to be thrifty. I would argue that many Vermonters still are. It seems to be part of the NEK character.

    But why that name?

    Here’s the fun part. The legend goes, witches cannot fly their broomsticks through a crooked window, as state historian Devin Colman explains. Thus, the tilt of these window keeps these malevolent hags out, protecting inhabitants from ill fortune and harassment.

    Particularly in their beds. At night, while they’re asleep.

    When you think about the Freudian implications, especially in the context of a New England Puritan legacy, there’s a lot to consider unpacking.

    Now, the first Vermonters were not Puritans, but many came from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, so many hailed from areas with Puritan roots. That probably carried with it superstitions and old beliefs in the Devil stalking the wilderness, ready to corrupt the noble efforts of good people, descendants of a culture centered originally on its belief in being God’s chosen, those who had forged the “City on a Hill.”

    I can’t help but think about a possible connection to spectral harassment, too. During the Salem Witch Trials, many of the accused were convicted with the help of spectral evidence, which simply meant an “afflicted” accuser claimed this woman or that man had sent their spirit out to harm them, choking, biting, or pinching them in visions and dreams. Such an accusation came down, simply, to one person’s word against another’s.

    “Saturday, she come into my bed in the middle of the night and bite at my breast!” cries Abigail Williams against Elizabeth Procter in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

    Photograph of an 1855 painting, Trial of George Jacobs of Salem, by Matteson, Tompkins Harrison, 1813-1884 [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division]

    Did such ideas, including this possibility of spectral bewitchment, consciously or unconsciously play a role in this peculiar window’s nomenclature? These windows have also been called lazy windows, Vermont windows, and coffin windows (since it would be easier to move a coffined body out the crooked window than down the narrow staircase, though I’m dubious). But “witch window” is what has stuck.

    Playfulness aside, how much does this name speak to deep-rooted fears of spiritual and sexual corruption? Did any men or women lying in their beds, gazing out their angled windows at a harvest moon, feel better believing that Betty So-and-So from the next farm over couldn’t send her spirit in to harm them or sicken their children, no matter how odd, brazen, or independent she might be, or how much they might secretly desire her, even as they lay next to their spouses?

    How much did 18th and even 19th century Vermonters believe in witchcraft? How superstitious were these people?

    Apparently, they were paranoid enough to have a conducted a witch trial of their own as late as 1785, taking to account wealthy widowed businesswoman and former Loyalist Margaret Krieger in North Pownal. She was accused of being “an extraordinary woman” and, as a test of her connection to Satan, dropped through a hole cut in the ice of the freezing Hoosic River. She sank and so, having been “proven” innocent (only true witches floated), some good soul dove in to rescue her, and she was exonerated. Not surprisingly, she left that village, having survived her ordeal.

    Hers was also New England’s last recorded witch trial.

    Historian and genealogist Joyce Held, who uncovered the Pownal witch’s identity, at Krieger’s grave . Photo from Seven Days

    In a fearful reaction to tuberculosis, Vermont also grappled with the Manchester Vampire around the same time. Captain Isaac Burton lost two wives to what was then called consumption. Believing his first wife, Rachel, had become a vampiric creature returning from the dead to harm his second wife, he had Rachel’s body exhumed and burned in public in 1793 (Picard).

    Vermont was also not immune to the New England vampire panic of the 1830s, another period in which communities reacted irrationally to surges in tuberculosis.

    Clearly, there was enough lingering superstition to prompt these extreme responses, though they really came down to nothing more than tragic manifestations of sublimated emotions: jealousy, desire, anxiety, terror–all that awful helplessness we feel in the face of things we do not understand and cannot control.

    Those things that keep us up at night.

    I think about them sometimes when I’m awake early in the morning, watching out our witch window as the gray moon hovers in its various shapes over our western hill.

    View of this morning’s moon from my witch window

    What I feel more than anything, however, is gratitude. That I get to speculate and daydream in this cozy old home that feels so much more like me. A home rich in little details and history. How I now get to enjoy my ordinary life among a bit of extraordinary local folklore.

    It’s also good to know nothing wicked or uncanny can enter my abode, *wink, wink*.

    Now, as for what might already haunt the insides–well, we’ll save that for another post.

    Happy spooky season! Thanks for reading!

    XOXO,

    Jenn

  • “It’s Only a Fooly Inside Your Head”

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    Spooky season is here! I just adore this time of year, maybe even more so than Christmas.

    Happy spooky season! Image from Microsoft Design

    The first thing I did to celebrate was pull out Daphne’s Halloween books. We started reading them right away, including The Ghost-Eye Tree by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault, with illustrations by Ted Rand.

    One dark and windy autumn night when the sun has long gone down, a young boy and his older sister are sent to the end of town to get a bucket of milk. As they walk down the lonely road, bathed in eerie moonlight, all the boy can think about is the ghost-eye tree...What will happen when they come to the tree? Can they run past it or will it reach out and grab them? (Blurb from amazon.com.)

    This is one Daphne hasn’t always been partial too, but this year, the rhymes caught her attention, and now we’re reading it regularly.

    This one is special to me, too, because I remember it from read-aloud in Mrs. Connelly’s first grade. I found it creepy then and loved the pictures.

    Don’t you just want to sink into those lines?

    Now, I appreciate the folksy rhythm of the verse and the sweetness of the underlying story, what it’s really about–two siblings experiencing a surprising moment of tenderness. Ellie, the narrator’s sister, runs back to the terrifying ghost tree to rescue her little brother’s special hat, blown off his head when the tree scared them on their way home from fetching milk.

    A good sister

    The story captures one of those rare moments many of us can relate to, when we realize our awful brother or sister actually does love us and maybe isn’t so awful after all.

    The story’s atmosphere and pictures are also meaningful now because they look so much like where we live. Rand’s artwork accurately evokes the deep darkness of the countryside, where the utter lack of electric light makes the black so thick it feels tangible.

    I can also appreciate the eyes in the tree, having seen ghostly, creepy eyes myself right in our own backyard. They’re only animals, of course. In our case, we sometimes see the eerie green of does’ eyes when we flash our high-powered flashlight over the fir trees on our way out to lock up the hens. In the book, the eyes in the old oak probably belong to an owl. But, from a child’s perspective–or even a fanciful adult’s–who’s to say for sure?

    I also pulled out Scary, Scary Halloween by Eve Bunting, with pictures by Jan Brett.

    Four pairs of eyes stare from the blackness to watch fearsome creatures trick-or-treat. (from amazon.com)

    We haven’t read this one yet this year, but it’s also one of my favorites. I don’t remember it from school; I only know it as an adult, and I adore the delightful, surprising point of view from which it’s written–that of a mama cat keeping her kittens safe under the porch on Halloween night as all the strange ghoulies and creatures come and go.

    Eight eyes indeed, and the real message–Halloween delights us all

    It is also written in rhyming verse (all the way through unlike Ghost-Eye), so it also has that atmospheric sing-song quality, and its pictures are just gorgeous–also very much like Vermont, where we live.

    Yep, looks familiar

    When I used to read this book to Daphne back in Texas, I daydreamed about what it would be like to spend Halloween in countryside like this one. Well, now I do, and it is absolutely wonderful, giving our spooky days a deeper, more stirring autumn vibe.

    The old English teacher in me can’t help myself when I read these picture books, either. I imagine all the ways these rich texts could be used in a Halloween unit: for inferencing, rhyming, understanding point of view, etc. It almost makes me want to develop a lesson, complete with a creative writing and art component. Like, how might you rewrite The Ghost-Eye Tree from the point of view of the owl up in that old oak? How would you illustrate it?

    I also downloaded a couple old favorites for myself: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Books 1 & 2 by folklorist Alvin Schwartz, complete with the original horrifying artwork by Stephen Gammell. I ate these up as a kid, as did several of my elementary classmates; I think we all bought our copies at the Scholastic Book Fair (way before they were banned), and of course the pictures were what first caught everyone’s eye. I still find them delightfully nightmarish.

    Cover image from amazon.com

    Schwartz’s collection was also my introduction to a lot of American folklore–creatures like the wendigo, and urban legends like “The Babysitter” and “High Beams”–ugh, that one really got under my skin.

    It wasn’t pure nostalgia that led me to purchase these digital copies. I have an idea for a little scary story of my own, a new spin on “The Bride,” a tale about a young woman who goes missing on her wedding day. She turns up dead years later in a trunk in her father’s attic, presumably after climbing in while playing hide and seek and getting trapped inside. It’s a variation on the old buried alive theme.

    This artwork still chills me. Picture by Stephen Gammell

    I’m considering setting my version in an old Vermont farmhouse that has a witch’s window; that window would play a significant role, of course. And, maybe, what happened to the bride wasn’t actually an accident…

    I came up with the idea after coming across a call online for a themed issue of a horror magazine, and I wanted to revisit the original version before doing any drafting. I realized Schwartz’s book would be good source material.

    We’ll see if I get a chance to write it. I might not be able to do anything with it, given time constraints and how it might actually turn out (I’ve been hard at work on something else, a short story epilogue to “Elspeth and the Fairy”), but getting this creepy story down would be good practice regardless. Who knows? Maybe I’ll just share it here for Halloween.

    Tonight, while I enjoy an adult beverage, I plan to decorate the house.

    What are your favorite titles for spooky season? I always love recs!

    See you next week!

    XOXO,

    Jenn

    Download a free e-book to read my latest published story!

  • Letting Go

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    It is officially fall.

    Sunflowers I arranged in our Mystic airbnb

    The autumnal equinox occurred on Monday, and with it Mabon, the pagan celebration of balance–between dark and light, night and day. It is also a day of gratitude for the year’s abundance as observers celebrate a second harvest and prepare for the colder, darker times ahead.

    Image from Desert Rose

    I admit, I didn’t do anything special for it. My casual Wiccan rituals–more a way to meditate than anything–have gone by the wayside this year, but recently I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors, enjoying the cooler weather and jewel-hued beauty of this season. I harvested the first pumpkins from our garden on Tuesday, and that was a fun way to appreciate what the soil has given us.

    Pumpkin I grew

    Truly, happiness is cutting your own pumpkins from your very own patch. It’s the little things, right?

    And another one

    Speaking of dark and light, while I’ve continued to enjoy my writing practice, I’ve suffered some creative anxiety this year.

    I don’t think it’s anything unusual; the more I read from other writers and artists, the more it sounds like we all enter this phase once we’re far enough along in our experiences. We’re wise enough to better understand the nuances and challenges of our crafts and how truly difficult it is to do them well–or even define what doing them “well” means, since there is a subjective element to all of it.

    I’m reminding myself, however, not to rush anything. Creativity is a process–you must undertake it in order to learn from it, and learning from it requires time, results, and reflection. These are not things to be forced or preset. Also, the joy must be in the process, not the products. Finding, and keeping, that joy where it’s healthier is what sustains us.

    I had a lot of this mindset validated by reading Amie McNee’s wonderful We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around and Make Something. My writer friend Gloria recommended it when I was smarting from that rejection of my spicy shifter story, and since McNee’s social media had already piqued my interest, I went ahead and ordered her book. I’m so glad I did.

    McNee offers some wonderfully comforting insights, especially regarding perfectionism. Basically, she argues, you just have to let it go. (Are you hearing that song in your head now?)

    This isn’t news. We all know that, yes, we can’t be perfect, and we shouldn’t try. That’s conventional wisdom. But, McNee’s reasons for severing ourselves from this awful pursuit feel fresh.

    She argues that perfectionism is actually dangerous.

    Not only does it prevent you from doing your work–or at least as much as you might otherwise–it also leads to lower-quality art in the long run. You become overly afraid of the inevitable mistakes and failures, and you prevent yourself from taking risks.

    Perfectionism will also make you deeply unhappy because what you do and what you hear about your work will never be enough.

    Perfectionism is seductive, she argues, because it feels like the great preventative, that magical cure-all for all things cringe and painful. If I am perfect, I will never be hurt goes the illogical thinking. For many of us, that’s the Siren’s Call, one that promises to keep us free from anguish, but it drowns us instead.

    I am the pursuit of perfection and I am horrifying. Image from Reddit

    Thus, it takes a “powerful reframe,” a lot of mindset work, to overcome it. If we can, however, we are liberated. Our art will be better for it, and more importantly, we will be happier, even through the silences and rejections and inevitable discomfort that will befall us because it always does. That is art, and that is life.

    One of McNee’s great suggestions for achieving this reframe is “Make shitty art. Do it every day.” Isn’t that fantastic? I love how assertive and rebellious it is.

    Invite crappy work into your practice, she challenges. You don’t have to share it, but don’t shy away from it either. Don’t shut it down; it’s better to finish it and move on.

    It will help you learn that it’s safe to be imperfect, not just in your heart but in your body too. You have to be physically relaxed when you’re creating, even when you know it’s probably dog doo. That way, you can amplify your enjoyment and let yourself do all the necessary work and even cross boundaries that might be too scary otherwise.

    That is how we creatives make lots of “small magic,” as she calls it. When small magic, which absolutely includes shitty art, happens, we eventually make our way into the powerful, profoundly true and moving creations–our wonderful, incredible, “big” art, as I’m calling it. But first, we must make the shit. And there will always be shit. Creativity is a recursive act. Rarely, if ever, is it linear.

    I’m working hard right now to embrace this.

    To a certain extent, I’ve always feared failure. I’m not an obsessive perfectionist in all things like some poor souls, but I’ve wrestled with it often enough.

    I struggled with my body being imperfect when I was dancing, and that led to a bout of anorexia and years of body dysmorphia that I’m finally overcoming.

    I struggled with it when my daughter was first diagnosed with autism. I thought we had to figure out all the best therapies right away, and if I just used every moment with her at home in the most effective ways, she could close all those gaps–we could cure her developmental delays! She would start to speak! All of that would mean I was in fact a good mom.

    I realized a couple years in, thankfully, that this was impossible. While she does need support and accommodations, Daphne will always learn and grow at her own pace, and we would all be miserable and unhealthy if I obsessed about somehow “fixing” her. That isn’t real love, anyway. She doesn’t need to be fixed.

    Daphne immersed in the sea lion show at Mystic Aquarium

    Now, I’m wrestling with perfectionism in my writing. It’s manifesting as reluctance to submit pieces for the final time, even after I’ve addressed all edits. I keep wanting to tinker, to rethink word choices and phrases, to make little changes here and there even when I know it’s not really helping the overall quality and maybe even hindering it. I’m holding on too tightly to some of my work because I’m afraid of its inadequacy.

    But you know what? It will always be inadequate (at least to a certain extent) because it will never be perfect. Nothing is. Shakespeare and Joyce and Morrison and all the greats were imperfect, too. Perfection is a mirage; it doesn’t really exist.

    At some point, a story just is what it is. I have to let it be done so I can free up time to work on new material–that’s how the growth, all that small magic, happens.

    It’s hard, though, to find that balance between giving your work the time it needs so that it has the best shot–which is important– and becoming perfectionistic, even detrimental, about it by dragging it out too long. Hopefully, discerning this difference will get easier with practice.

    So, in the spirit of all this–the season, the healthy creative mindset–I am working to let go of these things that do not serve me. I’m not resisting the anxiety, but I am working to move through it by letting myself share pieces that have been completed more quickly and are now truly finished. I am working on letting things be done so I can move on.

    Foliage on our road

    So, here’s something I composed quickly this week. It’s another seasonal haiku, this one in honor of foliage season, and I am proclaiming it officially done.

    More foliage

    Death becomes the leaves.

    Precious fall ephemerals,

    ruby and citrine.

    And more

    Thank you for reading, and Happy Mabon! Is there anything you’re working to let go of?

    Until next time!

    XOXO,

    Jenn

    Download a free e-book to read my latest story.

  • Mystical Days

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    Hello from Mystic, Connecticut!

    We are on a short vacation just four hours from home, here in this historical maritime village of southern New England.

    Tomorrow my husband will help take the famous schooner The Brilliant out on a little harbor jaunt. He spent time crewing catamarans and other sailboats in his youth, and he has always wanted to go out on this boat, so this was one of his big gifts for his 50th birthday. Thank you, Uncle J.T.!

    Image from the Mystic Seaport Museum

    In preparation for this special event, we rented a seaside cottage via Air BnB that looks out on a little inlet marsh, and we arrived yesterday evening. After getting groceries and unpacking, Jer and I sipped local craft beer in Adirondack chairs looking out at the water while Daphne listened to her music and enjoyed the autumn sunset with us.

    Seaside Happy Hour
    Daphne enjoying the view

    Today has been a special day for me and her especially.

    Aquarium
    So many fish!

    We spent two hours at the famous Mystic Aquarium, where Daph’s favorite experience was the sea lion show. She sat fully engaged in the fifteen minute performance totally sans iPhone or iPad, a rarity, and cried a little when it was over. It was an impressive show, with three sea lions zooming through the water, leaping out, and dancing, waving, and doing handstands on the stage behind the tank. An actual story unfolded–the animals and their trainers made up the Sea Squad, and they were all fighting to clean up the beaches of the Pacific Northwest. The environmental message was kid-friendly and well-done, and the sea lions were sleek and graceful.

    Bravo!
    Before the show

    In fact, Daph was clear she needed as a souvenir a small sea lion plushie–$20!!– from the enormous gift shop (as large as any of the exhibits). Of course, her dad said yes.

    She also enjoyed the beluga tank and stingray petting zoo.

    That spotted ray was very curious.

    It’s always a joy to see her immersed in something new, though it also reinforced how much she loves all things aquatic.

    After that, we ventured over to the Olde Mistick Village to shop. There was a place I definitely needed to go–Alice’s Little Haunted Bookshop.

    Oh. My. Goodness!!

    It was a brilliantly atmospheric brick-and-mortar horror merchant’s, and I could have browsed there all day.

    Heaven

    I snapped a few quick pics and narrowed down my choices to Sir Walter Scott’s Supernatural Short Stories and Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher, both perfect for spooky season.

    Oh, Edgar!

    We absolutely need more genre-driven, specialty little brick-and-mortars in the world–am I right, fellow bibliophiles?

    Mystic itself is a gorgeous blue-blooded New England seaside village. It exudes quiet Old Money wealth, so I’m glad I brought my Tiffany pearls.

    I’m viewing this weekend not only as a wonderful family trip, but as a personal treat for having just had a story published in Spellbound.

    It’s important that we writers treat ourselves. The publication day of a book or literary magazine is often quiet, so much so it can feel anticlimactic, so it’s important to do something for ourselves to honor our work. After all, we created something new, with our own imaginations, that didn’t exist in the world before now, and here it all is. That is absolutely magical, especially in this era of ever-encroaching AI.

    Are you doing anything special to usher in the autumn season?

    Or, if you’re a book lover like me, what would be your ideal brick-and-mortar bookshop? What would it look like, contain, exude? What titles and authors would be found there?

    Thank you for reading. Happy autumn, and see you next week!

    XOXO,

    Jenn

  • Where Do Our Main Characters Come From? Plus, teasers from an upcoming anthology

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    Image from Canva

    “But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.”

    That is a quotation from Chapter VII of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, which I’m currently reading.

    Current read

    It refers to heroine Bathsheba Everdine who, upon inheriting her uncle’s farm, is forced to deal immediately with a fire. As the quote suggests, she does so cooly and competently.

    It brought to my mind, however, a main character of my own, Lady Elspeth Aiken, from “Elspeth and the Fairy,” soon to be published in the Red Herrings Society’s magic and fantasy anthology, Spellbound.

    Images from Canva and Unsplash

    Unlike Bathsheba and Elspeth, I do not do well under duress. I never have. If someone screams, or shrieks, or something shatters, or–God forbid–there’s any bit of blood, my insides shrivel. The couple times I’ve witnessed a car accident, I’ve turned away. We pull over, of course, and I’ll dial 911, but I’m not the one leaping out to check on passengers and administer first aid, though I was once CPR certified for my job as a Pure Barre instructor.

    When I was teaching high school and, in the hallway, two students suddenly went at each other–fists flying, wild-eyed, deaf to all reason–my feet cemented into place.

    When we had our mandatory district training on how to take down an armed gunman who might break into our classrooms (isn’t that awful?), I went through the motions but always thought, Heaven help my kids if a psycho enters my room. I hope one of them can handle it, because I sure won’t be able to.

    I fly from emergencies, not toward them.

    I wait for someone else–another teacher, a hall monitor, my husband–to swoop in and control the situation, superior in their level-headedness. I do well if I don’t lose my own shit entirely.

    It’s one of the things I despise most about myself. Something that makes me so keenly, painfully aware of my worst shortcomings.

    Now, in the days leading up to my latest publication, it also makes me reflect on where my character Elspeth comes from, and how much I appreciate her.

    She is the protagonist of my original fairy tale, the younger daughter of a Scottish lord. After her kingdom’s heir-presumptive is cursed to suffer, endangering her land, she takes it upon herself to enter the menacing realm of the fairies, hoping she can somehow save him.

    Her characterization is definitely born in part from my awareness of my own awful weakness. Elspeth is able to do what I do not think I could do myself, and as the author, I bask in her bravery and fortitude. I project my desire for my own heroism onto her.

    Elspeth, image from Microsoft Design

    As writers, we often craft protagonists who represent perfected or idealized versions of ourselves. They are people we aspire to be, or they are curated versions of us we can still recognize. (Why are there so many FMCs who are bookish, clumsy, yet beautiful enough to attract the sexy, morally gray hero, after all?)

    I have no doubt this played a role in Elspeth’s conception. She has a bravery I naturally lack, and one I’ve been trying to develop.

    When I was outlining this story, I had something else in mind for her, too.

    Given the story’s genre, where virtue is often rewarded, I wanted to explore the archetype of the empath–the great natural nurturing soul I encountered again and again in my teaching career and, now, one I thankfully observe among my daughter’s classmates every schoolyear, bless their hearts (I am using that Southernism earnestly).

    Photo by Curated Lifestyle on Unsplash

    An empath is someone who deeply feels another’s emotions, especially their pain. It makes them finely attuned to all injustices and good in emergencies, especially ones of the emotional kind. When I was teaching high school English, there was always at least one empath among my students every year, often two or three. They were usually girls, but sometimes they were boys.

    They were the ones who stuck up for anyone suffering a snide remark. The ones who offered to explain a concept in a different way to the kid who still didn’t get it, when I was at a loss for any other way to break it down. They were the ones who volunteered in organizations like PALs. The ones who never tolerated bullying of any kind and who always had a smile for me, who always took a minute to ask me, “How are you feeling today, Ms. Ashley?,” especially in those early years when I was on a steep learning curve. (Ashley was my maiden name.) They were the students who were wise and already maternal or paternal decades beyond their years.

    I’ll never forget one empathetic student of mine, Erica. She was already eighteen but in my English II when I worked in our district’s credit recovery program, and she was a bright and a natural teacher herself. She’d moved to Houston from California. Unfortunately, a lot of her high school credits hadn’t transferred, so she was stuck retaking several classes she’d already passed, including mine. She took this injustice in stride, however, and quickly made friends through her magnetic self-confidence and wonderful tenderness and sympathy. In class, she did a lot of tutoring and helped maintain the momentum of discussions and activities. She genuinely loved most everyone and wanted good experiences for all of us.

    She did wonders for me, one day.

    My husband and I had recently received our then three-year-old’s autism diagnosis. We were reeling from the confirmation of this awful suspicion while trying to adapt to a schedule of brand new therapies, sessions where I still couldn’t believe a speech therapist had to teach my nonspeaking daughter the meaning of “Put in” by modeling a crayon going in a box… All of this while attempting to process a shadowy future terrifying in its uncertainty. For my husband, it was a metaphorical death. For me, it felt like a gaping wound that “simply would not heal” (that’s actually a line from my fairy tale), one that continued to throb with a complex mix of fear, rage, hopelessness, and even, irrationally, shame (in myself somehow, not my child).

    In the face of such a crucible, life doesn’t stop. I was still getting up at 4:30 am every day, traipsing into work, juggling the stress of planning, grading, and trying to motivate kids who’d been disappointed in their academic experiences–many of whom had their own serious challenges, including an array of learning disabilities. I was raw and overloaded and exhausted, and one morning I lost it on Erica’s class. I don’t remember what I yelled, or what prompted it. The class probably wasn’t listening, or someone had given me attitude, but just before the period ended, I burst into tears.

    Let me tell you, for both the teacher and students, this is one of the cringiest, most painful things that can happen in a classroom.

    When the bell rang, my students filed out in silence, even Erica. After that was lunch, and thankfully I could be alone. I closed my door, sat at my computer, and tried to enter grades but only saw the names and numbers blur. I finally gave in to sobs, letting myself feel all the things washing through me.

    Twenty minutes later, there were two tentative knocks at my door. Erica, accompanied by a friend, peeked in. She held up a gigantic, greasy McDonald’s bag.

    Photo by Branislav Rodman on Unsplash

    Her brow softly creased, she whispered, “May I come in, Mrs. Shaw?”

    I smiled at her, trying to lighten things. “Of course.”

    The kids shut the door behind them and pulled up desks next to mine. Erica spread out paper napkins and laid out the boxes of Super-Sized fries and 20 piece McNuggets. She handed me a sweaty Coca-Cola fountain drink. I never indulged in soda, but that day, the sweetness did more for my soul than I care to admit.

    “I thought you might be hungry.” Erica’s face was lively with kindness and concern.

    I thanked her profusely and tried to decline, assuring her I was fine and that I wished she hadn’t spent any money on me, but she only said, “I was going there anyway. Please eat.”

    So I did. I didn’t have the energy to keep resisting, and I was famished.

    The three of us ate together. Erica knew about my daughter since I’d shared a little about our situation with my classes, but she carried on a perfectly light conversation and occasionally patted my shoulder. We talked about music, movies, television, probably Game of Thrones, even Watt Pad where Erica was writing stories. By the time the bell rang for 6-7th period, we were all laughing, and most of my embarrassment was gone. Much of the tension had eased from my neck and shoulders, and I felt like I could face the rest of the day.

    On her way out, Erica folded me into a bear hug, and I let myself relax in her arms. Maybe I was leaning too much on a student, and it wasn’t professional. But, in that moment, we were just two human beings, and Erica’s need to provide solace, and mine to receive it, overrode everything else.

    She looked visibly relieved on her way out, too. Again, a true empath.

    Erica is who I envisioned when I wrote Elspeth.

    She, and all the students that came before her, and all the students after her–including all the kiddos now who, every year, befriend my autistic daughter, who rub her back when she’s crying or hold her hand at recess or toss the playground ball back and forth with her or sing her “Humpty Dumpty” for the ten thousandth time, who I count on to ease my nerves when I drop my child off everyday, which is such an act of faith–they are the many wonderful, necessary souls I pay tribute to in this story.

    A note from my daughter’s classmate. She gets several like these regularly from a couple different students.

    They are the ones who make this world bearable, and who inspire us to try changing it.

    Another note from Kaitlynn. This one I found in Daphne’s backpack yesterday.

    They are the ones who need particular care, too. Because they internalize more than the average person, they are susceptible to their own unique depression and burnout. I try to check in at least occasionally with these exceptional souls, whether it’s face-to-face with a current friend or online with former students and colleagues, Erica included.

    Image from the public domain

    With that said, here is an excerpt from “Elspeth and the Fairy,” one that helps showcase my protagonist’s care and sensitivity. When I drafted this scene, I was asking myself, how would Erica respond?

    Late one winter, Elspeth and Fiona tramped through a snowy field, reveling in the cloudless blue sky of the first temperate day. They huffed as they trudged, breath steaming through lips parted in delightful exertion, when a figure on horseback appeared over the ridge. Hunched over, he clung to the dappled-gray’s neck, his weight slumped to one side.

    As the horse galloped closer, they heard the man’s terrified cry:

    “Whoa!!”

    A string of furious words followed the plea, so crass that both girls, now young ladies, flinched.        

    “By Morrigan,” gasped Fiona, casting her eyes up to the vast blue dome, looking for crows. “What awful thing comes this way?”

    “Just a man.” Elspeth squinted to see more clearly. “In distress.”

    The horse, as nobly outfitted as its passenger, nearly overtook them, rearing up on hind legs to dislodge the aggrieved rider. The young man slid down, then groped madly away in the snow, desperate to avoid the stallion’s hooves. Though his mount cantered off, he ducked down, shielding his head and neck, and howled as if something from the sky were swooping down on him.

    “Sir!” Elspeth rushed toward him, her sister hanging back. “Are you alright?”

    “Do not you hear it?!”

    “What?” cried Fiona.

    “Two of you?!” The man shook his head. He did not look directly at either of them. Instead, he gaped far over their shoulders. Then he thrust his chin at the sky. “That horrible screech?!”

    Both sisters looked up at the silent, empty blue, then back at the poor young man. The bluebird sun sheened his damp auburn brow and highlighted the angular lines of his fine jaw.

    “I’m afraid we hear nothing.” Elspeth crouched down to take the man’s elbow, large and feverish beneath her hands. He shrank away as if burned.

    “I cannot see!” he cried, “Out of nowhere, I am blind! And I hear too much—things that are not there?!” His voice lifted and broke on the question before he struggled on: “My tongue, too, is separate from myself; I cannot control it! I am cursed! CURSED!”

    He screamed another volley of blasphemes so jarring they pained the girls’ ears.

    “An appalling enchantment,” Fiona whispered, her eyes two enormous orbs. 

    When Elspeth crept forward to lay a hand on him again, the man shoved her hard into the snow.

    “Fiend!” her sister hissed.

    “It’s alright.” Elspeth rose, gesturing for Fiona to calm herself. “He’s only frightened.”

    She stood over the panicked figure who was no better than a trapped animal, robbed of all assurance.

    “My lord, I am no wicked thing, just a mortal woman who wants to help you. Please let me.”

    The man flung his hands over his mouth.

    Elspeth steeled her voice. “If you remain out here like this, after the sun goes down, you will not live to feel it rise.”

    He only rocked back and forth.

    “I am reaching out now.” Elspeth knelt again to take his elbow. At her touch, a heart-wrenching wail broke from him, and she could not resist encircling him in her arms.

    “Be careful!” Fiona cried.

    “You will be alright,” Elspeth soothed, her cheek against the man’s. “We will help you home.”   

    If this appeals to you, I hope you’ll consider downloading the free e-book. Spellbound releases September 16th.

    Photo from Canva

    Full disclosure: this scene is slightly longer than the version included in the anthology. I had to trim it to keep the story under a certain word count, but I prefer this version and feel it does a better job highlighting Elspeth’s nature while contrasting her to her sister.

    I am kinder than Fiona, but I hate to admit that in this situation, I’d probably be right there with her, cowering back.

    Before I wrap this up, here are a few additional teasers for more stories in Spellbound, penned by my talented co-contributors.

    “Crimson Ink” by Kathlene Brown

    Branwell Brontë has always lived in the spaces between his sisters’ talents and his father’s expectations, better at conjuring the family’s childhood magic than finding a voice on the page. When a letter stirs old ambitions, Branwell draws blood, inks an incantation, and forces open a doorway to a forbidden world created by his sister. But Emily’s dark, haunting world is restless, and it pushes back. Crimson Ink: A Brontë Tale by Kathlene Brown is a gothic short story about the cost of creation, sibling loyalty, and the brittle line between imagination and ourselves.

    I’ve had a sneak peak at this one, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Brown’s descriptions are precise and evocative, and her literary allusions and connections are clever and intriguing. I’m excited to read more about this fictional version of the Bronte family and hope the author expands this narrative into its own book.

    “Eras and Echoes” by Anne Willoughby

    I’m looking forward to reading this one! Who doesn’t love a good vampire story, especially when it involves a woman’s liberation?

    “A Potion for Forever” by Colleen Brown

    Immortality has a price. Love demands a greater one. Vespera came for the flower that could grant her eternity. Thorne was the sorcerer bound to keep it hidden. Together, they uncover a love strong enough to rival forever. …if one of them doesn’t destroy it first.

    “Suddenly, eternity seemed smaller than a single lifetime with you.”

    I am always a fan of my friend Colleen’s work and truly cannot wait to dive into this! It sounds like an epic, swoon-worthy romantasy!

    If these have whetted your appetite, you’re in for a treat. There are fourteen tales total, all sure to be magnificent. They contain nothing beyond a “PG-13” rating, so this collection is appropriate for younger readers too.

    Here is a preorder link. I’ve been assured no one will be charged anything on release day, despite Amazon’s listing as $0.99.

    If you’re a writer, I’d love to hear where your main characters come from. If you’re a reader, have you ever encountered a character so relatable or inspiring (or something else) that s/he was seared into your memory?

    See you again soon!

    XOXO,

    Jenn

  • Summer’s End

    by

    ,

    Though the autumnal equinox isn’t until September 22nd, today, August 31st, feels like the last day of summer (I’m posting this a couple days after drafting, obviously).

    It’s been a good one.

    I wish I had half as much attitude as my daughter

    All season, Daphne’s enjoyed going through her old books and picking favorites to read. Jenny’s Pennies by Peter Saverine has been a particularly beloved one this week, and it’s a perfect selection for closing out the warm months.

    Here’s my attempt at visual artistry
    A well-loved book mentioning that shift from summer to school

    We’ve also practiced with all of her I Can Read! books, and she’s gotten attached to Pete the Cat: Pete at the Beach by James Dean.

    Are you seeing a theme?

    She’s done more painting, too. We gave a new one to her Grammy and Munka for hosting Jer’s 50th birthday celebration. The most recent one, done on the first of her larger canvases, we’re mailing to her Grandma and Grandad.

    This painting of Daph’s I like to call Fairy Fire

    Daph also enjoyed her half-days of July summer school, and we’ve savored lots of fun time with loved ones, including two sets of her grandparents, three of her uncles, and several friends, both old and new. It’s always good to socialize as much as possible in these easy months because we’re basically on our own in the dead of winter. It’s too hard for people to come visit us with all the snow and ice.

    Beaching like a mermaid at Island Pond

    Of course, we’ve done a ton of swimming–in the saltwater pool at Wildflower Inn, in Crystal, Willoughby, Island Pond, and Maidstone Lakes, and at the beach in York, Maine. At York, the waves were high and the water choppy thanks to the hurricane just off the coast. The red flags were flying, signaling that undertows were likely and swimming was forbidden.

    That wasn’t going to stop Daph, though. We stayed right by her, allowing her in only waist-deep, and let her play in the waves. She loved waiting for a big one, then sitting down just as it crashed over her, sweeping her back toward the shore. Back home, she had dozens of clumps of seaweed caught in her hair, and she smelled like a fish market. I had to scrub and scrub with two applications of shampoo, and even combing out her wet hair, I was still catching pieces of ocean flora. It was everywhere–on the comb, the bathmat, the tile floor, and of course all over the shower. Quite nasty, actually.

    “Now you really are a mermaid,” I told her.

    She started fourth grade on Wednesday, August 28th, and had a fantastic first two days of school and a pretty good Friday. Her homeroom and special education teachers are the same from last year, and she’s with a lot of her former classmates, so that’s always beneficial. It helped to ease into a new year with a short week and a long weekend, too.

    Having so much time back to myself blew me away last week. It felt like another adjustment, though a good one. I read and wrote a bit, mostly on this blog. I’m easing back into fiction because it always feels daunting after a long break, and I’m considering trying Amy McNee’s Two Week Reset Plan as described in her book We Need Your Art.

    A writer friend highly recommended this, and it’s soothed my creative anxieties

    I have plenty of projects in mind, but it all feels a little overwhelming right now, and the gentle and forgiving fourteen day schedule McNee recommends sounds like a good way to assuage those weird nerves that come along with creative reentry.

    Speaking of books, I thoroughly enjoyed my own grownup summer reading. Alas, I only read five titles–Daph got up too early every day for me to make full use of early morning reading–but that’s ok. Three of those titles were novels published this year, and two of those were debuts–yay! I enjoy supporting new authors. The others were a bestseller from 2020 and a classic, so a good mix.

    The classic, which I’m still on now, is Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd.

    I love Hardy, and I haven’t read any of his work in several years, not since my twenties. It took me a few chapters to get back into the rhythm of that more complex 19th century syntax, but now I’m trucking along nicely, enjoying the characters and appreciating the pastoral details much more now that I live in the countryside myself. It’s an interesting little introduction to sheep farming, which I appreciate since much of Vermont’s history involved this particular livestock, and I’ve considered making one character in a potential historical novel set here in VT a sheep farmer.

    I’m also amused by Hardy’s humor. I don’t remember his other novels having comical moments, but I’m sure they do and I just didn’t pick up on them, or they didn’t stick in my memory. In this novel, his depiction of the rural folk–the farm hands, carters, waggoners, malters, and their wives–is great, right down to their names and dialogue. One little boy is christened Cainy Ball because his mother, ignorant in her Scripture, mixed up who was who between the Biblical brothers, believing she was naming her son after the one murdered and not the murderer. Another farmhand, a hen-pecked man, is referred to mostly as “Susan Tall’s husband.” You can imagine what Susan Tall is like.

    Here’s my favorite funny line thus far. It occurs when the heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, who has just inherited a large farm she’s determined to run herself, is handing out wages for the first time. She asks a seasoned employee about two female farmhands, meaning are they good, productive workers? He interprets her question as a moral one and answers, “Oh mem–don’t ask me! Yielding women–as scarlet a pair as ever was!”

    My summer reading efforts were rewarded when I won a prize in the St. Johnsbury Atheneum’s drawing!

    Sweet reward for pleasant efforts

    I rarely win anything, so this was fun. I haven’t spent the gift card yet but will soon, preferably while Daph’s at school so I can enjoy my treat in perfect peace and quiet.

    Finally, I received my contributor’s copy of Ditch Life Magazine, a debut literary publication beautifully summer-themed, in the mail a week ago.

    I have a piece of contemporary flash fiction in it which was accepted back in April 2024, so it was amazing to finally have the publication in my hands. It arrived accompanied by a lovely thank you note and sticker, and all of it was a nice pick-me-up after that recent rejection.

    Beautiful sticker now gracing my laptop

    I was worried that rereading my piece after so long would make me cringe, but it didn’t. Sure, there are a few lines I’d like to go back and edit, but overall, I’m proud to have it among some gorgeous and moving work. The other contributors have impressive bios, so I’m in good company.

    All in all, we’ve had a wonderful end to the summer.

    One of eight pumpkins growing in my garden

    The season is definitely turning. Morning temperatures are in the mid-forties and afternoons in the high sixties. My pumpkins and sunflowers are growing well, and there are even a few red and orange leaves scattered here and there in the trees. It looks like we might have an earlier foliage season, given how dry the weather has been. Today, we spent some time at a local corn maze, and it was a nice way to invite the new season in.

    Farmer Daph
    With Dad in the corn maze

    I’m looking forward to sharing more about my fall and winter writing plans, which include a zero draft of a novel-length WIP, a gothic romance. Plus, I have an original fairy tale coming out in a few weeks in the Red Herrings Society’s magic and fantasy anthology, Spellbound.

    I’m looking forward to teasing more about that, including some of the stories by my fellow contributors, so stay tuned!

    I’m no Canva pro, LOL. Daffodil photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

    I truly did try my best to squeeze this post in as my fourth and final one for August, but circumstances kept working against me, so I just had to give it up and post today. The world will not end because I didn’t upload four times in August.

    I did write two more August posts last week, but I didn’t send out email notifications because I didn’t want to flood inboxes. My own is overwhelming me, so I know how irksome that can feel.

    If you’re interested, you can catch up on those previous August posts here:

    The Books that Made Me: Final Installment

    and

    Two Haikus, Plus Some Thoughts on Versatility

    Thanks for reading, and please feel free to share anything you’d like about your own summer or even your fall plans. I hope you’re enjoying these liminal days.

    Sunflower at the Kingdom Corn Maze in Sutton, VT

    See you next week, when I’ll get back to a more regular posting schedule. I’m hoping to post on Thursday or Friday of each week.

    XOXO,

    Jenn